US NorthEast + Canada (5) vs (3) US South
SS: Star vs Catalystic - better player, sry i dont have more to say :/ skill advantage/disadvantage doesnt matter as much in a rly bad mu, so bringing a threat star's team doesnt cover can probably give cata a chance, ive seen that happen to east a few times and there's certainly no guarantee that u can cover everything in a new meta
SS: obii vs col49 - if south convinces col to try (which seems somewhat likely, they're a pretty high-energy team) he can bring his teambuilding talents to innovate the meta and make something that does awesome vs standard. conveniently, gum/northeast tend to build v standard teams . ive seen this in nu snake like 2 weeks ago (+ all of RU Snake), his teams work so well.col's probably the better player anyways in spite of obii's good results this ssd.
SS: Bouff vs PinkDragonTamer - since hanging out with tlenit in taipans chat during ssd & learning the tier for slam playoffs pdt's been a very active pu builder, i like a lot of his 'innovations' and think he builds rly good teams. they're abt equal in skill as players, imo; bouff has more success historically but pdt has been in great form over the past few months. plus bouff is in like 3 circuit poffs so he has a lot on his plate
SS: Sensei Axew vs asa - sensei's 4-1 in this tour LOOL hold up, sensei = pu goat??
SM: soulgazer vs ManOfMany - dont know sm well, many's team last week was cool and he played ok (a few misplays but overall did well, esp relative to ktut's play) but soulgazer is still definitely the favorite
ORAS: Finchinator vs RawMelon - finch is def better player but i'll predict this upset on the grounds that:
1) US NE doesn't seem to have much ORAS support, gum/juno dont play it, evi can prob pass something but i know she hates oras as much as i do LOL so not sure finch will come in with much knowledge of how it works.
2) rawmelon just won with a cool team to help bring us south to the tiebreak, so i feel justified in predicting an upset (tho if finch tries hard to learn it this week he'll most likely get the win)
BW: EviGaro vs SBPC - predicting evi in bw is very straight forward here, esp since she was like 8-2 in pupl or w/e [and playing a guy that i dont think plays much official tiers at all]. honestly the biggest risk here is she does what happened in the sergio game, overpredicting what her opponent will do.
DPP: Heysup vs Skysolo - heysup is good, kinda tilted rn but he tends to dominate the old gen lower tiers, plus skysolo rly didnt make any aggressive plays in the tiebreak game when i think there were some very clear opportunities to do so and take the lead. as an example, heat waving > psychicing with 3% xatu, he was obviously not throwing out gabite bc your only ground resist was about to die. going victreebell on tang, and thus keepng ampharos healthy, gave skysolo better odds in the endgame; hed be able to throw the 14% ampharow at purugly and fish for a game-winning para. tldr dont love how he played the tb so picking the favorite, heysup. if heysup gets lucked im gonna be so sad man i see it happen all the time
i predicted 4-4 but i think us northeast is significantly more likely to win, one of the games i predicted for us south is an upset (rawmelon > finch) and another one is quite even (pdt > bouff) whereas id be surprised if us ne lost any of the games i predicted for them.
EDIT: turns out i just copied the royesk predict for sm when i stole his format. LOL it's actually 5-3 Northeast then mb
gl all go midwest
